Race, Class, and Feeling Good in Birth

This chapter covers the ways race and class intersected in birthing people’s experiences of birth pleasure, specifically in how the study participants connected their experiences of pleasure during birth to their racial identities and class positionalities. Herein, I group participants by how they defined themselves in terms of race. Calling on the subversive tenor of Nina Simone’s iconic song “Feeling Good,” (1965) I do my best to convey the rebellion that is woven into the embodiment of pleasure for birth-giving people, especially those of historically marginalized racial identities. My grouping of participants on the basis of race is not intended to flatten down their identities or their experiences, but rather to provide avenues for interrogating deeper nuances and to honor the differences in how race and racism had shown up for them during their labor and birth experiences within their unique social and cultural positionalities, because discernible patterns certainly emerged within racial categories as well as beyond and in resistance to them.